Sunday, 24 February 2013

The Strongest Open Swiss event ever in Singapore by Junior Tay

From June 16th to 17th 1990, SCF and Queenstown
CC combined forces to form the Singapore Open cum Queenstown Open
Championships to take advantage of the World Championships U16 and
U18 event held from June 1st to 15th 1990. It
was by far the strongest Open event ever held in Singapore with 2
future World Champions (Topalov and Kramnik), 1 future European
Champion (Tiviakov), 1 future Russian Champion (Sakaev) and 1 Soviet
Champion (Tseshkovsky).

The Singaporeans who did best were IM Wong Meng Kong and FM Teo Kok Siong, who both scored 5/7 for a tie from 7th to 13th, half point away from the eventual winners. Meng Kong remained unbeaten throughout the event and even beat GM Vitalk Tseshkovsky in Round 4. Kok Siong, on the other hand, was on 50 percent after Round 4, but put in an incredibly strong finish to win the next 3 rounds. Of note is that another 5 pointer in this event is none other than Vladimir Kramnik who was bogged down by a loss to another 5 pointer (in Round 5), IM Rogelio Barcenilla (now GM)! The top performing Malaysian was Mok Tze Meng, who made 4.5 points for a tie from 14th to 20th.

Anyway, all the top players showed their professional side when in the final round, almost all the players (except 2385 rated Russian Alexander Malevinsky who had to beat Peter Wells to join them) who topped the table drew their final round games!

On tie break IM Andrei Luikin won the event from Topalov, Sakaev, Tiviakov, Votava and Malevinsky. Lukin was then coaching Sakaev who had won the World U16 event the day before. Lukin had since been credited by GM Peter Svidler as his greatest chess influence in his career.

In the Challengers section, Tea Lachava (who had won the World Under 16 girls event) finished 1.5 points clear of Kataryna Lewandowska, Yulia Levitan and Chin Chee Shun.